From Excerpt to Cosplay. Paths of Knowledge in the Nordic Museum Archive

Abstract

The aim of this article is to shed some light on the situation that occurs when scholarly knowledge, once highly valued, is successively undermined, while elements of the same learning live on as attractive resources to other stakeholders. More accurately, the research question relates to the process that starts with many ethnologists who, over time, come to increasingly view formerly important materials as less relevant to their own academic issues. For the sake of the argument, the Nordic Museum’s extensive collection of excerpts concerning folk customs and beliefs is used as an eye-opening case study. During the 1960s and 1970s, folklore researchers and ethnologists retreated from researching those lingering traces of the past—of which the Nordic Museum’s excerpt collection constitutes a powerful material centre—and thus this field was left free for others to claim. By drawing attention to both the productive force of the Nordic Museum’s collection of excerpts, and a number of contemporary and popular representations of ancient folklore, this article actualises a set of questions that deal with the relationship between new and old knowledge; for what becomes of previously sought after academic learning, once treasured in the Nordic Museum Archive, when the vast majority of the discipline heads for new materials, methods and theories?